Friday, November 25, 2011

Arab Democracy Makes Netanyahu Nervous

I'll give the Israeli PM this: he's at least honest. Israel's interests lie with the continued existence of Arab dictatorships that are bought and paid for by the USA. Why? Because Israel is a vile colonialist and racist regime whose existence is only made possible by the fact that tens of millions of Arabs have been suppressed and prevented from expressing their democratic desires. Israel's "democracy" - truncated and deformed as it is by its ethnocratic character and by the Occupation - is only made possible by the denial of democracy for the vast majority of the regional population. Netanyahu, like all the best Zionist politicians of the past 100 years from Herzl onwards knows this.

"In February, when millions of Egyptians thronged to the streets in Cairo, commentators and quite a few Israeli members of the opposition said that we're facing a new era of liberalism and progress...They said I was trying to scare the public and was on the wrong side of history and don't see where things are heading," he said.

But time has proved him right, Netanyahu said. His forecast that the Arab Spring would turn into an "Islamic, anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic wave" turned out to be true, he said.

OK, so his portrayal of why he opposes the Arab Spring is a lie. It is precisely its democratic aspirations that he loathes. But for saying as much of the truth as he can stomach, I'd like to wish Benny Netanyahu a happy thanksgiving, like I would a fat turkey.